Giving vintage furs a second life

When Natalie Bloomingdale started her e-commerce business The SIL, which stands for “Stuff I Love,” in 2017, she focused on independent designer exclusives made in small runs that shoppers couldn’t find anywhere else. Lately, she’s added vintage furs to the mix, giving new life to pedigreed treasures via Instagram Stories.

Here, the Dallas-based Texas native talks about how the e-commerce landscape has changed and how she uses social media to propel this sustainably driven segment of her business.

 —Interview by Marcy Medina, edited by Bianca Prieto

How and when did you decide to start selling vintage furs? How does it work?

The SIL’s client base are women with exceptional taste who appreciate the one-of-a-kind. What started as a gesture to help one furrier find homes for a handful of “abandoned” furs (in this case, no one had paid the fur storage bills since the 1990s) blossomed into a full-fledged vintage fur business for The SIL.

I casually take photos of the vintage furs—no photo editing (I wouldn’t actually know how to do that if I tried), no production... nothing more than a mirror and my iPhone. We do a bidding process where people send a direct message with their “highest offer,” and when the furs have a “minimum” that is not met, they are saved to Instagram’s “Highlights” where they’re categorized by type and available for immediate purchase.

It’s been so rewarding to be the bridge between a customer base and these beautiful vintage furs that have been sitting in climate and humidity-controlled vaults for—in some cases—decades! They’re like works of art in that no two are alike, and they’re all made by hand. Since California has banned the sale of new furs, the family-owned fur businesses I work with have had to pivot in terms of revenue stream. Some are third-generation, having been in business for almost a century. Los Angeles’ once-massive fur garment industry (think of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and all the starlets draped in them) has been dramatically reduced to just a handful of furriers left.

When you launched The SIL, what was your business plan? 

My plan for The SIL when I launched in 2017 was to be a destination for exclusives from independent designers. The whole premise of the site is: what’s on The SIL can’t be found anywhere else on the Internet. I wanted The SIL to be a place where individualists would be free of what I saw as a very homogenous retail landscape. Often, the designers work on a small scale with limited fabric yardage, so there’s not really much inventory or waste.

(Continues below)

How has social media contributed to the success of The SIL? In terms of the vintage fur, please speak to why you chose this platform to sell the furs.  

Our clientele knows what she likes and doesn’t really pay attention to “seasons” or “trends” – we just had an incredible summer of vintage fur sales. I think there is the immediacy factor of social media that lends itself well to our specific offering, but I am also passionate about what we’re selling. These are true gems with incredible history. What’s important is that we’ve built a trust factor with our clients. They know we stand by the supreme quality of what we showcase, and our close-to-zero-percent return rate reflects that.

Then, on the end-user side of things, social media has been incredibly impactful when it comes to the visibility of wearing vintage fur. We’ve moved hundreds upon hundreds of vintage furs at this point, and there was the whole “Mob Wife” moment that went viral. The more women that are out wearing their vintage furs, the more others feel inclined to do the same. After all, there is nothing that will keep you warmer!

How has fashion e-commerce changed since you launched The SIL? In what ways have you had to pivot, and what would you tell anyone who's trying to launch an e-commerce shop today?

For The SIL’s offerings, I’ve never gone to a fashion week or trade show – everything was really collaborative with the design process and things like fabric selection. So in that way, The SIL has always been unique and marched to the beat of its own drum. We had really beautiful photo shoots in really beautiful places... but in the last few years, I’ve noticed that the more well-orchestrated the images, the less engagement. So my advice to someone launching today might be to invest the money you might have spent on fabulous photo shoots and put it elsewhere. I think the more authentic the content, the more depth the reach.

(Bloomingdale image courtesy The Collective You)

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The SKUpe is curated and written by Marcy Medina and edited by Bianca Prieto.